


Shades of Red

by teamdiverseprotagonists



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Canon, F/F, POV Ruby, Protective Ruby, is alternate canon a thing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 00:30:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4939783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamdiverseprotagonists/pseuds/teamdiverseprotagonists
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots of Anna and Ruby's life on the run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shades of Red

Moonlight stretches across the barren floorboards, in long, broken slats from the shutters hanging crooked at the windows. Ruby’s hair gleams dully in the dark blues and greys, the red of her hands and her jacket a dark rust. She passes through the light, and for a moment she is frozen, silent and gleaming, before she passes back into the shadows.

Down the hall, the walls are dull wooden paneling. Through the doorway, paint chipping and flaking. Into the bedroom, with the sagging ceiling and the water stains creeping along the edges of the floorboards. Anna’s hair, the brightest thing in the dark room.

One window, casting a long, rectangular strip across the far wall.

Ruby pads over to the battered mattress lying on the floor, pushed up against the furthest wall. She sinks down next to Anna, her hands clutching her knife and her eyes looking straight ahead, unseeing.

The mattress squeaks as Anna shifts, leaning forward as she carefully pries the blade from Ruby’s immobile fingers. Ruby sits, fixed, and doesn’t flinch when the knife clatters to the ground, disturbing the silence. Then Anna’s arms are around her, Anna’s head resting in the junction between her neck and her shoulder.

Ruby’s fingers curl in on themselves, and the muscles in her shoulders tense, breathing slow and shallow. Wordlessly, Anna holds her closer.

They don’t speak.

 

****************

 

Fire, red, the sky boiling with clouds, rearing high and dark and terrible. Smoke billowing from the house, belching swirling currents of grey and black and orange. The flash of Anna’s hair, a candle flickering in the face of an inferno. Jets of blue, like lightning but not quite, hit the ground, puddle out, and quickly gather upwards. Features begin to form from the blue- eyes, hair, clothing-  
Wings.

Red again, joined by silver- Anna’s blade is out, and she’s fighting frantically, hair a whirlwind. “Go!” she shouts at Ruby, eyes wide and harried.  
An angel attacks from the left, and Anna’s gone, slashing and whirling. And Ruby’s running, arms pumping as she crashes through the underbrush, feet knocking into calves, long hair criss-crossing her face in long, tangled strands. As she flees, feeling herself twist inside her meatsuit, she sees the fire raging below as Anna clashes with her brothers again and again and again outside the last safe house they had.

 

****************

 

Cool, dark. The night is still, and Ruby’s eyes flick brown black, brown, black. Her legs are pillars planted in the cool grass, and the tendons in her shoulders are knotted ropes, weaving around her neck and strangling her slowly. A wren calls softly from the east, and Ruby finds herself wishing with a surprising vehemence that it would be quiet.  
In her fisted hand, she holds the vital Anna’s grace, the white-blue light nestled safely in her hand and the choking tension.

 

****************

“You came here looking for an ally?” The voice is derisive, cutting and disdainful.

“Who would ever ally with you, you who are the lowest of the low, the scum of not only earth but Heaven and Hell as well?”

From the other room, out of sight, Ruby grits her teeth and draws faster, smearing the red over the black of the door, hanging crooked on its hinges.

“You have fallen in every way imaginable-”

A furtive glance around the doorframe, hand still working busily.

Anna stands in the middle of the empty warehouse, dirty sunlight streaming through the long windows in visible beams. Her knuckles are bloodless white, locked around her blade. The man before her jeers, stance aggressive and his mouth hurling spittle and truths sharpened into taunts.

“They used to sing praises of the mighty Anael, whose light and devotion was unquestioned. When they hear your name now, entire garrisons turn away in shame. How does it feel, _Anna_ , to know-”

Ruby’s hand slams into the sigil, sending the door flying against the wall with a bang.

A flash of blue, a thud, as the angel’s empty vessel hits the concrete floor.

Anna’s hand loosens around her blade, the point slumping towards the ground.

Ruby leans against the doorframe, suddenly tired. Her hands are red.

“I think we get the drift.” she informed the room quietly.

 

****************

 

They’re in a diner, sitting in a cherry red vinyl booth. The fluorescent light reflects, garish, off of the blue and white tile floor. A basket of fries sits in the middle of the table, oil sinking into the foil and making it shine. Anna’s laughing and Ruby’s smiling. But their knives lie in easy reach and every few minutes Anna’s eyes rove upwards on instinct to scan the hidden sky while Ruby darts wary glances out into the dark night.

 

****************

 

“Naomi.” Anna’s voice is small, defeated and broken. The cuts on her arm are still bleeding sluggishly, her shoulders slumped, her red hair unwashed and ragged as it escapes from its braid in listless clumps.

“She wants me, Ruby. She wants me bad. Before, I could have stood up to her, but now-”

Ruby’s hands, calm, finish bandaging the biggest wounds, the ones Anna’s grace can no longer heal.

“I- I wasn’t supposed to know what she did, Ruby. What she does. But I found her- her _lair_ , once. The things she has in there, what she uses them for-”

Anna’s voice is broken off by a sob, wet and quivering.

“She’s going to use them on me, Ruby. She’s going to make me forget everything I am, and I know it. I know she’s out there, and I know she’s going to find me, we can’t run forever-”

Her voice is rising hysterically, chest beginning to heave. Ruby shushes her softly, a hand in her hair and an arm around her.

“Tomorrow.” Ruby advises her, voice soft. “Just- fight it tomorrow.”

Anna’s eyes turn to her, wide and guileless. Hands of smoke smooth down fiery red hair.

 

****************

 

This red is not the burning of Anna, but the oozing rusty crimson of blood. Ruby is tied in the middle of the room, her arms chained behind her and her shirt slashed.

Quiet footsteps.

Anna steps into the doorway, the light from beyond the iron door illuminating her figure where she stands.

“Ruby.”

A breath of relief.

Then Anna is hurrying towards her, her feet making a quick patter across the cement floor. Her fingers, quick and nimble, work at the chains.

“They called me traitor.” Ruby tells her, bearing bloodstained teeth, red splashed across the enamel from where she’d bitten through her lip to keep quiet. She begins to laugh, low and soft and despairing.

“They called _me_ , a traitor.” she repeats, incredulous.

Anna’s hands work behind her, steady.

“A _traitor_.”

Her voice is a shriek and her teeth are red, red red.

 

****************

 

Tail lights gleam ahead of them, rain drumming steadily on the roof. Ruby sits in the driver’s seat, hands resting loosely on the wheel. Anna is curled up in next to her, feet tucked under her and her head resting against the dripping window, eyes looking forward blankly. The highway lights ripple and flash against the car, the beams settling over Anna’s hair turning it orange-yellow, before being ripped away as the car prowls forward. It is fifteen minutes to midnight.

“We can’t run forever.” The omission is quiet, whispered across the divide between them, a cloud of vapor leaving Anna’s lips to cling, ghost like, to the window.  
Ruby is silent, for a minute.

“We can’t stop, either.” Her hands on the wheel are loose in a forced display of nonchalance.

Between them, the lights streak past, temporary and finite.

“It’s not safe for you, to stay with me.” Anna begins, shifting upright a little. “I’m on the run from Heaven- if they find you, a demon, the things they would do to you-”

Ruby shoots her a smile, brittle. “And I’m wanted by all of Hell. What do you think they would do to a depowered angel?”

The silence stretches.

Ruby notices, idly, that the lights that rush over and cling to Anna, don’t touch her. Anna is illuminated, while Ruby sits in shadow. A being of darkness, til the end.

Anna, with a sleepy murmur, sinks back to her original position. Ruby’s hands relax on the wheel.

“I’m glad I found you.”

Anna’s voice is unexpected, and Ruby blinks at the sentiment, caught off guard.

“Me too.” She tells her, smile soft and unseen in the darkness.

A few more miles, and Anna shatters the precious silence once more.

“We’re running out of gas.” Her hands, curled somewhere under the blanket of her hair, don’t move, but her head nods in the direction of the dashboard.

Ruby can’t help thinking, privately, that gas isn’t the only thing they’re running out of.

“Got it.” Ruby clears her throat. “We’ll stop at the next oasis.”

Anna nods, content, and curls up tighter, hair fanning around herself. Ruby’s eyes refocus, and she steps on the gas, gently.

****************

The black hand of Alastair is twisting through Ruby’s dark, dark hair and yanking her downwards, when Anna is finally ripped away from her with a scream, a fountain of red, and a flash of glowing blue wings, and she wonders, briefly, how the fire of Anna is expected to survive in a tank of that impersonal, sterile blue.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi at deadfemalecharacterhq.tumblr.com


End file.
